Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome these amendments. I suspect that they are probably in response to the increasing numbers of people getting notices to quit. It is welcome that notice periods are being extended but it will only delay people presenting as homeless; it will not stop notices to quit. For those reasons it is probably right that I articulate that we need to put a month's rent back into people's pockets and to bring down rents in that way. We should ban rent increases in addition to extending notice periods. I do not know if housing rights groups or tenants' groups were notified about these amendments. As far as I am aware they were not and this move took us by surprise, which is somewhat unusual. We welcome the amendments and I commend the Minister of State for bringing them forward.